


before dawn

by llassah



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bedsharing, Blow Jobs, Frottage, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Nogitsune Trauma, POV Scott McCall, Pack Dynamics, Recovery, handjobs, post season 3B, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1800385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llassah/pseuds/llassah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Derek is both a presence and an absence. He runs through the preserve pretty much every night, leaving tracks and trails that cross over each other over and over again. He guards Scott’s house some nights, waits at the edge of the lacrosse field when they’re in class, but he doesn’t seek any of them out. Scott still isn’t used to waking up without Derek there. It’s been two weeks since he got out, longer than his captivity, but he reaches for Derek when Stiles is already right there in his bed.</em>
</p><p>Scott, Derek and Stiles, in their bedrooms after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	before dawn

“There are four bombs set to go off. I can bring this place to the ground in seconds if you don’t give me what I want.”

No hint of a lie.

One of the werewolves leans back and smirks, clasping his hands over his stomach. “I think we can handle a bit of shrapnel, kid,” he says. Derek moves a little, his shirt making a soft whisper against the back of the chair. Scott keeps looking at Stiles. Can’t look away. He’s too still.

“And the wolfsbane?” Stiles asks.

Some nights, Scott presses his hands to his stomach and feels the sword, the slick crunch of it, the pain. Needs to check he isn’t bleeding still. He feels that old ache right now.

“I’ve put three different types in the bombs. I’ve put in the usual things, too, of course. Nails, a few screws, ball bearings. A bit of broken glass, just to mix things up a bit. See, I’m being kind to you. I’m giving you a choice. Either you definitely die slowly in agony here, or you run from Kate Argent and you maybe die quickly later.”

The quieter werewolf, the one who was kinder than the others, lets out a low whistle. “That doesn’t sound like much of a choice,” he says, but he glances at the case, at the bundles of money already on the table. Stiles looks at him, doesn’t smile. Just looks at him. “You ever blow anything up before, kid?” he asks after a long pause.

“Yes,” Stiles says. Next to him, Derek makes a soft noise, a quiet inhalation. He’s still injured, still weak. He smells of blood, wolfsbane. He’s conscious, though. Breathing.

The smirking werewolf leans forward, teeth growing into fangs. “Ever killed anyone?” he asks. His eyes are a challenge. Scott keeps expecting the act to fall away, keeps expecting Stiles to break.

“Yes,” he says, and there’s no uptick, no scent of a lie. “I’ve killed forty three people. I’ve run a sword through an Alpha. I’ve caused the death of an Argent. And if you don’t let me have my werewolves back, I’ll kill you too.”

Lydia’s flinch is almost too small to see when Stiles mentions Allison. Scott can smell her blood, all over again. Can hear her breaths, the way her lungs sounded, her struggling heart. He can’t look at Stiles right now, looks down at the money. Wonders where they got it all from. If it’s even real.

“Y’know, I don’t think your Alpha wants you to have him,” the quieter werewolf says. “I don’t think he likes you much.”

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Stiles says. His voice is harsh, but steady. Scott’s nose is full of the scent of blood.

*

They’re half a mile away when the explosions happen. Stiles looks at the cloud of dust in his mirror, nods. “Stiles, you didn’t—” Scott starts to say.

“Their cars,” Stiles says, goes back to driving, feet swift and sure on the pedals. Lydia has Derek’s head on her lap, is rinsing out his wounds with bottled water as they rumble along the road. They go back to silence. Stiles keeps driving as dusk falls, as the moon rises. They stop for gas once, buy some energy drinks, a few chocolate bars. Scott leans his head against the window as the silence weighs down on them. Derek is asleep, still feverish. Lydia strokes his hair absently as she looks down at her phone. When it gets to midnight, she makes Stiles pull over, slips out of the car as Derek stirs and mutters. Stiles clambers into the backseat, lets Derek slump back down onto him.

“I won’t sleep,” he says.

“Just close your eyes,” she says, pulls the seat forward. She’s wearing heels, sandals with gold straps that wind around her ankles, up her calves. She can still wrangle the jeep, switches gears almost as smoothly as Stiles, gets it through second without crunching. Scott wants to talk, but he doesn’t know what to say. It’s cold here when the sun is down. He turns the heat up, hitting the dash gently to get it working. The rattling hum fills some of the brittle quiet. When he turns round, Stiles has his eyes closed. He isn’t asleep, though. His heartbeat is still rapid, breathing slightly faster than usual.

“Stiles,” he says quietly. Stiles doesn’t respond. “Thank you for what you did. I know it was—I know it was hard for you,” he says, then turns back to watching the road. Stiles doesn’t sleep. Stays quiet and still, but doesn’t relax into sleep. They cross the border easily.

“We bribed the guard on the way in,” Lydia says. “Seemed simpler.”

She starts yawning when it gets to four AM. “I’ll drive,” he says, and she pulls over, goes into park then kills the engine completely. Derek wakes up at the sudden absence of sound, takes a few harsh breaths. Stiles opens his eyes too, looks down at Derek, puts a hand on his forehead like he’s taking his temperature. “It’s okay,” Scott says. “We’re over the border. Stiles and Lydia got us out. How’re you feeling?”

Derek kind of shrugs one shoulder. “Alive,” he says. Stiles moves his hand away from Derek’s head, lets it fall to the seat. Derek closes his eyes again. “Glad y’came,” he mumbles as he slips back under. Stiles makes a choked sounding laugh that isn’t really a laugh at all, looks down at Derek’s face, calm and relaxed in sleep.

“We should get going,” Stiles says. Scott nods, steps out into the cool night air. He takes a few moments to breathe. He can’t catch a scent of any of the werewolves who took them, but it’s good to feel his lungs expanding, to get out of confinement, from out of the silence full of words that need to be said but can’t be found. Lydia pats him on the shoulder as she walks around to the passenger side. The moonlight makes her hair the color of blood when it catches it the right way.

*

They’re still a day from Beacon Hills. He remembers this road, used to go down it to visit his dad’s family just over the border. He remembers how tense the car would feel sometimes, how his grandfather never really said much to anyone, how his grandmother had bright, kind eyes, strong hands. How his mom used to joke about her own family coming from the wrong sort of people, about being from bad blood, jokes that weren’t really jokes at all. His dad would argue with his parents over it, refused to let a single word be said against her family, would defend her over and over. Even when they had argued in the car on the way, even when it got bad and they were hardly speaking, his dad would still tell his parents that they would speak to his wife with respect or he would be leaving. Scott used to wonder before if it was really her he was fighting for. If it was actually his choices he was defending and not her at all. It was probably a mixture. He stopped seeing his grandparents after the divorce went through, and he misses them. He can still recall the smell of the particular perfume his grandma wore, the way her dress always had a little flour on it that would come off in tiny clouds of white dust when she hugged him.

The sky is lightening. It’s a kind of soft gray now, and the bushes and scrub to the sides of the road are starting to get a distinct shape. It’s still cold. Lydia’s got her feet tucked up under her, arms wrapped around her torso. He takes off his jacket, keeping the jeep steady with his knees, hands it to her. “Sorry about the blood on it,” he says when he sees the darker patches on the cuffs, one patch on the back of it. “It’s dried, so.” She takes it anyway, uses it like a blanket. “You warm enough, Stiles?”

“You gonna take off your shirt if I’m not?” Stiles asks. Scott grins, can feel something in his chest loosen a little.

“If you wear it,” he says softly. Stiles doesn’t answer. Scott can see him in the mirror, or parts of him. His hairline, and the arch of his eyebrow. His eyes, if he sits up straight. Scott can hear his heartbeat and his breathing, the small sounds any body makes at rest. Stiles smells tired, still anxious. Something sad. Scott wants, more than anything, to pull the jeep over, pull Stiles out of the car and hug him. Derek, too. He wants to find somewhere safe and warm and just keep them there, make them sleep and eat, make them smell right, make them smell happy and contented. His eyes glow red in the mirror. He can hear the soft snick his claws make on the steering wheel. He doesn’t shift back. There’s no one else on the road, no one to see him like this. He kind of wants to put his head out of the window, howl out a challenge.

*

They stop at a roadside diner at six. They must look incredibly suspicious in their ripped, bloodstained clothes. Derek still can’t stand unaided. Scott and Stiles walk with him between them, an arm around each of their shoulders. Lydia is wearing his jacket and her hair is starting to come loose from its braids, falling in soft waves around her face, down her back. They all order strong coffees and half the breakfast menu. Lydia disappears to the restroom and Scott has to stop himself from following her, checking it’s safe. The only people here are the waitress and the chef, but he still feels like he’s out of his territory. He watches the door and waits. She comes back with her hair unbraided and pulled into a loose bun, sits next to Stiles. There’s a country song playing on the radio, something he vaguely remembers. It’s from an old recording; he can hear the slight hiss of static, the crackle.

“John Denver,” Derek says, nods at the radio. “My great uncle used to say he knew him. We were never sure if he was lying or not. He would always win at poker.”

The waitress comes over with their coffees. They all dump sugar into theirs. Stiles pops a couple of Adderall into his mouth, washes them down with black coffee before it’s cool enough to drink, shudders at the taste. He puts the bottle back into his pocket, shrugs when he sees Scott watching him. “It’s been a busy week,” he says. “I’ll sleep when—I don’t know. I don’t know when I’ll sleep.”

“Stiles…” Scott starts, trails off. He doesn’t know what to say. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, and Scott can hear his heart, would know it was a lie even without it. Scott reaches over, laces their fingers together. “I made myself remember how it felt. When it was inside me. I made myself remember how pleased it was with me. Spent the whole trip down thinking about it. It was—there was no other way to get you out. I had to be scarier to them than Kate Argent.”

Scott wants his veins to blacken. Wants to draw this out of him, to take it on himself. “None of what you said was true,” he says, means it with all his heart. “None of it was you.”

Stiles traces a pattern in the sugar crystals he spilled on the table. “It doesn’t feel like that,” he says, then huffs out another not-laugh, says “which is why the plan worked,” and raises his coffee in a toast. “Yay for guilt.”

Scott shakes his head, can’t help smiling. He keeps a hold of Stiles’s hand until the waitress brings the food over. He hasn’t eaten properly in over a week. He just looks at the food at first. Derek is doing the same. He knows he shouldn’t eat too fast, or eat too much, but he wants to bury his face in the plate of food, to never stop eating. To rip the bacon apart, tear into it and—

Derek nudges him in the side. “Getting a little toothy there,” he murmurs. Scott takes a breath, another. Gets himself under control. Stiles has started eating already. Scott always has to stop himself from just sitting there gaping when Stiles eats food, has to stop himself from getting drawn in watching. It’s always so messy, so careless. Abandoned, in this grossly fascinating way. Scott cuts his bacon into squares, divides up his eggs. Quarters his stack of pancakes. He looks over at Derek, who’s eating slowly, steadily, hunched over his plate like he thinks someone will take it from him. Lydia has made some kind of weird pancake sandwich, and she’s pressing down the edges with her knife, sealing them together. She shrugs when she catches him looking.

“They’re better like this,” she says, picks up the whole thing and bites down.

Scott shakes his head, starts eating. Stacks his fork with just the right amount of bacon, takes a sip of coffee. He eats slowly. At home, this kind of breakfast is saved for Sundays. For special days, when his mom wakes up singing—

“Stiles, my mom,” he says suddenly, jerking the eggs and bacon off his fork.

“She knows you’re safe,” Stiles says around a mouthful of food, fishes his phone out of his pocket, slides it over. “Call her,” he says. Scott doesn’t know why he didn’t before.

“I should have—” he says, breaks off. It should have been the first thing he did. She must have been so worried.

“Alpha instincts. You had to get your pack to safety,” Derek says, one arm still curved around his plate. “One track mind. It’s—it’s impossible to ignore those instincts.”

Scott thinks about Peter, then about Erica and Boyd. Isaac. He looks down at Stiles’s phone, finger still hovering over the call button. Stiles presses it for him and he picks it up hastily, puts it to his ear as his mom picks up on the second ring, voice thick with sleep. “Stiles, is he—”

“Mom, I’m fine,” he says, clears his throat and blinks down at the scuffed Formica tabletop. He can hear her sheets rustling, the pad of her feet on the carpet.

She takes a shaky breath. “Baby, I was so worried,” she says, and he can hear the tears in her voice. “Did they—did they hurt you? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, mom,” he says. “Just—can you stay on the line?”

Everything smells wrong, smells of _them._ He feels weak, adrift, the echoes of a hundred different pains thrumming through him, the cuts of claws, teeth, knives, whips.

“You want me to talk, sweetheart?”

“Just—just breathe,” he says. He can hear her heartbeat. Her breath. “Just be there.” _Be safe._

She goes downstairs. The noise of her feet changes as she gets to the kitchen. He can hear her heart more clearly when she puts the phone between her shoulder and her ear. She’s pouring herself a glass of orange juice, yawning. He can hear the swish of her blood in her veins, the noise her throat makes as she swallows. He can hear her cracking eggs into a bowl, the thrum of the coffee machine coming to life. “You making pancakes, mom?” he asks at last. Derek has finished his food. Scott pushes his half full plate towards him.

“Yeah. Orange juice, coffee, pancakes. It’s a good day at last,” she says. He closes his eyes. Smiles. He listens to her as Derek steadily eats the rest of his food, too.

When they’re all finished, he says “I love you, mom,” and she tells him to hurry back. He can’t quite look at anyone for a few moments, but when he looks up at Stiles he’s smiling a little, and some of the flat, dead look has gone from his eyes.

Stiles takes over driving again. Derek calls shotgun, gets the heating to work first time, slumps down into the seat with a soft sigh as it rattles to life. They’re quiet for a few miles, then Derek sits up suddenly. “What month is it?” he asks.

“It’s February,” Stiles says, looking over at him. Derek rubs a hand over his beard.

“I missed it,” Derek says. “Huh. I’d hoped I could just ignore it this time. That’s one way of doing it. I guess—” and he trails off into this rusty sounding laugh.

“Your birthday,” Stiles says, and Derek nods.

“Happy Birthday to me, and a Merry Christmas to all,” he mutters.

Scott doesn't know if Kate was there that day. If she’d had any family to go to for Christmas. Maybe she’d left him alone that day. Derek hadn't really been in any position to keep track of the days. Not by the time they’d thrown Scott into the cage too. “I always only got one set of presents,” Derek says. “Laura spent the whole of Advent calling me Jesus.”

“We’ll put up a tree. Put your face at the top instead of a star,” Scott says. Derek turns to look at him, smiles. It’s one of his rare smiles, quiet and real. They go back to silence, then. There are more cars on the road as they skirt around the towns, stick to the quieter back roads, then it’s back on to the open highway and the expanse of sky. They don’t stop for a few hours. Lydia falls asleep, her cheek pillowed on his jacket. Her breathing is deep, steady. He tunes into her heartbeat, uses it to keep himself grounded as they cross territory lines, as he scents strange wolves on the wind, different packs. If they got into a fight right now, they’d lose. He closes his eyes and tries not to think. They’ll get home. They have to.

They stop at a gas station with restrooms around the side. They fill up, buy more Gatorade, bottled water, some energy bars. They go to the restroom in shifts. He wants a shower, wants to sleep for a few hours. He wants to stay in a motel, to stop moving for a while. He knows Derek needs rest, good rest, in a bed. Stiles needs to sleep, too. But they can’t rest. Not until they’re home. If the jeep broke down, they would run. If there was a barrier across the highway, he would drive through it. He splashes his face with water and climbs back into the jeep, gets in the driver’s side and they set off again. Things are getting greener as they go north. It’s starting to smell right. He opens the window a little to let the scent in. He realizes after half a minute that he’s waiting for Stiles to make a dog joke. Stiles is looking down at his hands instead, face grim, closed off. He rolls the window up, keeps driving, drives until he can’t any more, hands over the wheel to the next person, stays awake the whole time.

They cross over into Beacon Hills at eleven at night. They go to his house without even discussing it. Lydia just takes the route automatically. The sheriff’s car is parked in the driveway. The front door opens as Lydia pulls up and he doesn’t wait for the jeep to stop moving before he’s at the door, face buried in his mom’s shoulder as he shakes, breathes in the smell of home, of comfort, his mom’s perfume. He’s crying, can’t stop. She’s crying, too, kisses the top of his head, pats him down looking for injuries even though she knows she won’t feel them, knows he’ll never scar again.

*

The first thing he does when the talking is over is take a shower, as hot as he can bear it, stands there under the spray switching forms, mouth open, breathing in the steam, trying to ignore the way he can still smell traces of them, of blood. Even the dirt from the floor had a scent, and it won’t leave his skin. He shaves off his stubble, not bothering to use a mirror, cuts healing as quickly as he makes them. He doesn’t look in the mirror after either.

When he goes into his bedroom to get dressed, Derek’s stood there in the middle of the room with a towel draped over one arm. He smells so _wrong_ , doesn’t smell like himself any more. He smells like strange wolves and pain, blood and wolfsbane. His hair is too long, beard unkempt and there’s grime etched deep onto his face, into the lines around his mouth, his crow’s feet. “You smell like her,” Scott blurts out, flinches at the way Derek’s face goes blank. “I mean—you can wash here. There are clippers in the cabinet, if you need them. It made me feel better. Washing them off.”

“It does,” Derek says. Scott had forgotten. He’s been through this before.

“Do you mind wearing my clothes? I’ve got some sweatpants that would fit you, a shirt.”

He herds Derek to the shower, goes back to his bedroom, gets into the clothes he’d thrown onto his desk chair the night before he’d been taken, rolls around on his bed, buries his face in the pillow until things start to smell right again. His mom comes in, kisses him on the forehead. “Derek can stay, right?” he asks. He had wanted Stiles to stay, too, couldn’t quite find the right words to ask him. Stiles keeps on getting that closed off look, keeps looking down at his hands, going oddly still and quiet. There are days when he wonders if Stiles wants to be yelled at, to be blamed. To have some kind of punishment, something harsher than forgiveness. Other days, it seems like all Stiles wants to do is shrug it off and carry on.

“Of course he can, honey,” his mom says. She misses Isaac, he thinks. They haven’t really talked about it.

“I’m…I got used to Derek being there. When we were in Mexico. We had each other.”

She brushes his hair back from his forehead. “He can stay for as long as you need.”

“You’re the best.”

“And don’t you forget it, son of mine,” she says, kisses him again, on the tip of his nose this time.

When Derek comes in, Scott shifts over to make room for him. They lie there together like they did on the cold concrete floor. Seek out each other for warmth, breathing in sync. They start out side by side, shift closer, tangle their legs together until Derek has his head resting on Scott’s chest, arm thrown across his torso. His feet are hanging out from under the comforter but he doesn’t seem to mind. Scott strokes Derek’s hair, traces his finger down the bridge of Derek’s nose. Scott used to talk to Derek in the cage, tell him stories, try and tether him to reality when he was feverish, when Derek’s eyes were a permanent blue and he whispered for his mother, every breath feeling like it was going to be his last. Scott doesn’t need to say anything to him now. He doesn’t know what to say to him. It’s like everything between them has been shaken up and now it’s spilled out onto the floor. It’s messy and complicated, and things have never been simple between them but now he’d like to kiss Derek and he doesn’t know when that happened. He strokes Derek’s hair and waits for morning. Lets sleep take him.

*

“Did you sleep at all?” he asks Stiles the next day. Stiles shrugs.

“I’m fine,” he says, which wasn’t the question. He smells faintly chemical, heart rate a little elevated.

“When did you last sleep?” he asks, and Stiles tells him he’s fine again, his gestures expansive, words bright and sharp, skipping from topic to topic. He scintillates. Scott’s been looking for a reason to use the word, so he tells Stiles he’s scintillating and Stiles smiles at him, a quieter, calmer smile, tells Scott that that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to him.

“You’re welcome,” Scott says, and for a moment they’re fine, or maybe they were always fine, it’s just that Stiles isn’t right now. They’re in the Sheriff’s office, waiting for his dad. The sheriff sits back in his chair and watches his dad walk in. He looks tired. Looks at Scott like he wants to check he’s okay, like Scott’s just fallen off the slide or had an asthma attack, hands on his shoulders, gentle and strong. He asks all the right questions. Scott doesn’t tell him anything, looks at the wall slightly to the left of his shoulder. “I was never reported missing. This isn’t official business,” he says.

His dad raises his eyebrows, dark eyes cool, assessing. “I get a lot more flexibility when it isn’t official business,” he says, and for a few seconds Scott feels trapped again, has to breathe slowly. Stiles keeps looking between them, hasn’t said a word yet. Scott hates his silence, more than anything. He listens to Stiles’s heartbeat, calms himself down with his eyes closed. When he opens them again, his dad is crouching down in front of him. “Go get some rest, kid,” he says. He smells comforting, like the aftershave he always uses. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that he gets to leave them, to leave his mom lonely and struggling, to leave him angry and confused, and still smell like home. It’s not fair that his first instinct is to seek comfort from him, even if it only lasts for a few moments.

His dad leaves, hands in his pockets. Stiles doesn’t speak. The sheriff sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, the back of his neck. “He’s not going to let this go, Scott. You know he isn’t. Not until he gets the truth.”

The truth. The truth is that Derek was captured, held, and tortured. The truth is that Scott let himself get caught by the same people, because it was the only way they could get to him. The truth is that the only reason they got out of there is that Stiles still thinks he’s a murderer. The truth is that sometimes Scott wishes he was back in that cage, because survival is a lot simpler than living.

*

“He’s gone,” the sheriff says. He’s in uniform, looks as if he’s slept in it. “No sign of a struggle, no note. His jeep is still parked. He says he’s fine, but he hasn’t slept, I know he hasn’t, and—” he breaks off, takes a deep breath. “Sorry, kid. I know you’ve got enough on your plate. But he wanders, and I don’t know where he goes.”

Stiles’s mom used to go missing. The sheriff used to make it into a game for Stiles when it happened. “Mon’s playing hide and seek again,” Stiles would say when his dad dropped him off at their house. Scott’s dad would go out with the sheriff, flashlights in their hands, and they’d be gone for hours, stay out all night sometimes. Scott sometimes wonders if she ever met the Hales when she wandered. If one of them found her, barefooted, coatless, running from nothing. Derek has never said anything to Stiles about her. Nor has Peter, and he would if he thought it would get a rise. Some of the kids in their class used to call Claudia mad. Stiles got good at punching people that year. He got angry, and never stopped being angry, not really.

The sheriff doesn’t smell angry. Just tired. “We’ll find him,” Scott says. “I’ll call Derek.”

The sheriff grips his shoulder briefly, nods. He’s used to all this. It must feel like he’s reliving it, and Scott doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to even begin to talk to him about it. If he even has the right to.

Derek answers on the third ring. “What’s wrong?” he asks. It doesn’t sound as if he’s been sleeping. He went back to his loft on the second night. Scott wishes he could force him to stay in his bed, make him sleep.

“It’s Stiles,” Scott says, and that’s all he needs to say.

*

They find Stiles at the Nemeton. It takes them three hours, is nearly getting light when they track him down. “I just went for a walk,” he says when he sees them. He isn’t wearing shoes, only has a thin t-shirt on. The hems of his sweatpants are soaked, knees muddy. “Needed to clear my head.”

“Did it work?” Derek asks, takes a step closer. Maybe Scott hadn’t noticed the way he looked at Stiles before he rescued them. He’s noticing now. It’s like Derek’s learning something new every time he sees him, and every time it’s beautiful but in a way that hurts, but he never wants to look away. Stiles tilts his head to the side, eyes distant.

“Huh. I guess it kind of did,” he mutters, swings his arms back and forth a few times, wriggles his toes. “I’m cold,” he says a little louder, frowns. “When did that happen?”

Scott shrugs off his coat, drapes it around Stiles’s shoulders. “Stiles,” he starts, doesn’t know what to say. He’s angry with—he’s mad at stiles. He hadn’t realized, but he is. “Stiles, you. You have to stop.”

“Stop what?” Stiles asks, and of course he’s going to make Scott say it, of course he’s going to make this hard. He’s already lost that distracted expression, looks sharp, cold. It’s like he’s back to bargain with the werewolves, a briefcase full of money in front of him, a detonator in his pocket.

“All of—all of this! You have to sleep, really sleep, eat properly, take your meds at the right dosage—and—stop lying, stop blaming yourself, stop—stop—”

“Stop worrying you?” Stiles asks in a voice as sweet as poison. “Stop being a burden? Stop worrying you? Am I a stray? Something for you to—something for you to fix? I guess with Isaac gone, you’ve gotta move on, right? Find another pity project. I killed people. I _killed_ her, Scott, so why the _fuck_ are you even bothering? Why haven’t you just—”

He can feel his claws digging into his thighs, focuses on the pain to get himself back under control. He wants to hit something. Wants to lash out at something. He takes a few deep breaths, focuses on the sharp jut of Stiles’s collarbone, the slight skip in his heartbeat, Derek’s steady breathing. “I love you,” he says, and every word feels like a weapon, feels heavy in his mouth. “Stiles, I love you,” and Stiles’s eyes go wide and he looks so young suddenly, like they’re in the sandpit again, making treehouses, playing in the creek. “I don’t want to fix you and you’re not my pity project, you’re my Stiles. My best friend. My best everything. Please let us in, let us help you,” he says, pleads, and he can see the exact moment when Stiles gives in, when he lets them in, takes a step closer and wraps his arms around him. He wants to kiss him. Wants a lot of things. Derek doesn’t join them, and Scott wants to tell him he’s allowed, but doesn’t know how to. He holds Stiles close instead and waits for him to relax against him. It takes a long time.

*

Derek has painted some of the bare brickwork, scrubbed the blood off the floor, swept up the glass. “The paint will probably flake off; it should be limewash really, but it’s color, right? Something new to look at.”

There are more books than before, and the beginnings of something like a kitchen. He has a few pot plants, with weird knitted sleeves around the pots, and there are cushions on the floor, at least ten of them, with different patterns, clashing colors. “I read an interiors magazine. I think they’re scatter cushions, but well.”

“Where to scatter?” Scott murmurs, looking at the plaid pattern on one of them. “So…how have you been? Since you came back here?”

Derek takes a long time to think about it. It’s like Scott has asked him to solve an equation or something. “I’ve been okay. Quiet,” he says at last. “Some things don’t feel real yet. Or safe.”

He was taken from here. Having a space to defend is something that Scott is starting to understand, an instinct that feels like it’s ingrained, as fundamental as breathing. No wonder Derek’s reclaiming this space. Weaponising scatter cushions. “You can stay with me if you need to,” Scott tells him but he really means ‘please stay with me’. Derek nods, and they go back to putting together the set of bookshelves Derek just had delivered. There are five screws left over in the packet when they’re done. It looks okay though.

“I guess we’ll find out if they’re load bearing screws when we put the books on,” Derek says, stepping back and looking at it.

“What does load bearing even mean, when it’s a screw?” Scott asks. Maybe the bookshelves will collapse or something. When Derek shrugs, Scott can see a strip of skin, just above the top of his jeans, a trail of hair leading downwards. He can’t stop looking at it. It’s like he’s under some kind of spell, in a trance. He makes himself look away, looks up to find that Derek is watching him, his eyes a cool green. They should talk about this, probably. Talk about the way he wants him, wants them. How he wants to protect them both, to hold them close, wants to pin them down, to weigh them down with his body and put his teeth to the napes of their necks. He wants to say ‘I think I want you, but I don’t know what that means.’

Derek looks at him like he’s talking to him, like there are words between them, even though the silence has stretched out for long moments. Maybe he’s waiting for Scott to say something first. Scott feels adrift. He feels like he’s clinging to anything he can for dear life, because there’s a wildness running through his veins and he’s always going to be afraid of that. Always. So he stays quiet, and stares at bookshelves, and wonders what keeps them from collapsing, if it isn’t those screws.

*

“You don’t have to sleep, just lie down. You’re safe here; I won’t let anything happen,” he tells Stiles. Stiles nods, looks at his hands. He’s sitting on the edge of Scott’s bed, feet planted evenly on the floor, knees spread. He’s wearing Scott’s sweatpants and they’re a little too short, the hems just grazing his anklebones. His feet are pale and skinny, toes long. Monkey feet, he used to call them. Stiles can hold a pen between his toes and write his name. He used to tell people it came naturally. They weren’t there for the long summer afternoon when Stiles practiced in their backyard, toes curled around a twig scratching letters into the dry dust at the edge of the grass, tongue stuck out of his mouth in concentration. The silence stretches out. Stiles’s toes dig into the carpet and his ankles flex, one after the other.

“I won’t sleep, I know I won’t. I can’t,” Stiles says at last.

“Then don’t,” Scott tells him, sitting next to him on the bed. “It’s okay, Stiles. It’s okay.” They’ve both brushed their teeth already. Stiles’s hair is still damp from the shower, thin lines of water trickling down the side of his neck. His shoulders are tense.

“You should kiss me,” Stiles says suddenly. Everything seems to pause and then restart, contracting to one small point and then exploding out again, too fast to deal with.

“I—I should?” he asks, turns towards him. Stiles looks across and nods.

“Come here,” he says, and Scott does, leans forwards, mesmerized by the dark sweep of his eyelashes, the way his pupils are wide, his lips parted. “You keep looking at me like that,” Stiles says. It sounds dispassionate, like it’s just an observation, but there’s a bead of sweat on his upper lip, another one on his forehead just below the hairline, and he smells like lust, arousal. Smells like an invitation.

“Like what?” Scott asks. He can feel Stiles’s breath on his face, leans forwards again, further this time, puts his hand on the side of Stiles’s face, fingers fanning out across his cheekbone. Kissing Stiles is familiar. They kissed when they were twelve for practice, learned what felt good from each other. Stiles used to make notes, had a tattered spiral bound notebook with ‘makeout tips’ written on the front in bright green sharpie, filled the first few pages in with his kissing charts and the rest with baseball stats. It feels familiar and different this time. They start out slowly, chaste little kisses, get the angle right after a few tries. Stiles has closed his eyes already. He always does. His lips are a little chapped, and the skin beneath Scott’s hand feels thin, dry. He’s warm, though, warm and soft, and keeps making these tiny noises at the back of his throat, eager little sounds. Stiles likes it when Scott kisses the side of his mouth, likes it when Scott parts his lips. They make out without any aim or purpose and it’s good, it’s all so _good._

Stiles is smiling at him when they break apart, cheeks flushed, lips red and shiny with spit. It’s the same smile he gets when they’ve done something dangerous and survived, the kind of giddy adrenaline rush that he lives for. Scott presses their foreheads together, wants to laugh at the way Stiles goes cross-eyed keeping eye contact, lets his head drop down onto Stiles’s shoulder, face pressed into the side of his neck. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” he admits, but he doesn’t move away, lets Stiles tug them both down so they’re lying on top of the comforter, their feet still touching the floor.

“We should make out while you think about it,” Stiles says, rubs his chin over the top of Scott’s hair, both his hands dipping under the hem of Scott’s shirt. “You’re a werewolf; you can do both.”

Scott doesn’t think he can. Not when Stiles smells so aroused. Not when he can see the damp patch Stiles is making against his own sweatpants, not when Stiles already smells like his, wearing his clothes, using his shower gel. He brings his head up and kisses Stiles anyway, kisses him until his lips tingle and he can feel Stiles thrusting up against his hip, hands clutching at his back, fingers clawed, blunt nails digging into his skin. Stiles catches his lower lip between his teeth, releases it, the edge of pain heightening everything, making it sharper. He wants to drown in this. Stiles’s hips are moving faster and faster, smearing dampness on the skin just above his waistband. He’s gasping against the side of Scott’s mouth, his breath hot and damp on his skin, little pants, eyes squeezed tight shut. He’s _pretty_ , skin flushed, covered with a sheen of sweat.

“Touch yourself, want you to come too,” Stiles says, voice raw, wrecked sounding. Scott shuffles his sweatpants so that they’re just under his ass, pulls Stiles’s sweatpants down too because there’s no way Stiles is coordinated enough to manage any of this, rolls them so he’s underneath Stiles and kisses him as he gets their dicks lined up with each other, wraps his hand loosely around them. Stiles takes a few tries to get a rhythm going, but when he does his hips are fluid, the roll of his spine hypnotic. He wants Stiles to ride him, one day, watch him come apart.

Scott tells him so, tells him everything he wants to do as Stiles bites down on his shoulder, hips moving faster and faster as Scott tells him how he’ll blow him, pin his hips down so he can’t move and spend hours learning what he likes, tells Stiles how he’ll spread him out, lick him all over until he smells like he belongs to him, and they’ll fuck and it’ll be perfect because it’s them. Scott tells Stiles he loves him just as Stiles’s body locks up and he comes with a broken sounding whine, back arched as he comes on Scott’s stomach, his hand. A few jerks of his spunk-slick hand and Scott comes too, biting his lip to keep himself from making too much noise, eyes closed, shivering pleasure running right through him.

It takes him a long time to come back to himself. When he does, Stiles is slumped over him, breathing deeply against the side of his neck. Scott’s about to make him move when he notices how relaxed he is, how slow his heartbeat is. He’s asleep, at last. Scott looks up at the ceiling, spunk drying on his stomach. The air is heavy and ripe with the scent of them, and it’ll linger. He likes the thought of that, something in him settling at the idea. Stiles shifts a little, making a small, contented sound, nose rubbing against Scott’s neck. Scott can feel his smile against his skin.

He must fall asleep for a little while, because he wakes up to Derek draping a blanket over them both. He almost sits up, stops when he sees who it is. He’s suddenly aware that both of them have their pants down, of how much the room still smells like them. “I think I might be a cure for insomnia, and that isn’t feedback I ever thought I’d get,” he says quietly, mind still fuzzy from sleep. Derek snorts softly. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says for the second time tonight. Derek sits down on the side of the bed, looks down at them both. For a few moments it feels like they’re back in the cage, wrapped around each other. It feels so natural, Derek’s quiet presence anchoring him as sleep drags him back down. “You should stay.”

Stiles moves a little, so Scott strokes his back until he relaxes, smacking his lips. He’s drooled on Scott’s shirt, making it a little damp. They’re stuck together in a few places with jizz, and Scott isn’t looking forward to trying to separate. They’re pretty gross, but Derek’s eyes are dark when he looks at them, lips parted. He looks hungry. Starving. He stays quiet, though. Scott can feel himself getting sleepier and sleepier, lulled by Stiles’s breathing, his slow, steady pulse. He blinks, blinks again. He doesn’t know if Derek says anything. Drifts off before he can hear it. Derek is gone in the morning, the blanket the only sign he was even there.

*

Stiles starts staying over on bad nights. Some nights they don’t even make out, just lie together, talk until one of them falls asleep. Sometimes, Stiles doesn’t fall asleep at all, and Scott wakes up to him staring dry-eyed at the ceiling. Sometimes he has nightmares that he wakes up screaming from, crying for his mom, his dad. Scott knows the sheriff’s number by heart now, gets to know the signs of that kind of nightmare. He’s getting better, though. He’s getting there. Scott wakes up surprised he isn’t in a cage. Every morning, he expects to be back there. He knows why Derek doesn’t sleep: he can’t, not when waking up throws him back to hell. Derek was there for two months. Stiles spent months in a different kind of hell. Every time he wakes up, he counts his fingers. Scott has started counting with him, kissing the tip of each one.

They don’t get beyond handjobs and sloppy makeouts. It’s great, just having that. Stiles sounds like he’s _dying_ when he comes, thuds his heels against the mattress and twists his whole body like it’s painful. He kisses Scott as if it’s the only thing he ever wants to do, all that concentration, all that focus on him. Sometimes he asks Scott to pin him down, to hold his wrists in his hands, to _make_ him, and that’s okay too, because it makes Stiles go quiet and still afterwards, relaxed in a way that seldom happens, lets Scott stroke his hair, his back, leans into it with a lazy smile. Stiles has stopped hesitating before he touches him, has stopped being afraid of hurting him, slings an arm around him in the corridor between classes, in lacrosse. It feels just like before, some days. Other days, Scott just wants to kiss him.

Derek is both a presence and an absence. He runs through the preserve pretty much every night, leaving tracks and trails that cross over each other over and over again. He guards Scott’s house some nights, waits at the edge of the lacrosse field when they’re in class, but he doesn’t seek any of them out. Scott still isn’t used to waking up without Derek there. It’s been two weeks since he got out, longer than his captivity, but he reaches for Derek when Stiles is already right there in his bed.

“You say his name sometimes, when you sleep,” Stiles says one night, idly playing with a rubber band he took from the physics lab. Scott doesn’t even need to ask who he’s talking about. “Like you’re calling for him.”

“I’m worried about him. And…I don’t know how much of that is—he’s not in the pack. I don’t know what we are to each other and I want to kiss him and I think he wants to kiss me and then there’s Kira and I’m kissing you and I wanna do it all the time and Stiles, god, it’s just so—”

He breaks off, tries to smother himself with a pillow. Stiles is laughing at him, shaking the bed slightly with it. “You have the dumbest problems,” Stiles tells him, and Scott has to grin, nose crinkling as he presses his face into the pillow. He sits up after a few seconds, looks down at Stiles lying sprawled on his bed, one hand on his stomach.

“I feel like I’m being greedy and generous at the same time,” he says at last. “Like I want to give everything and have everything.”

“You’ve got me. Whatever else happens. And I worry about him, too. I—I want him too. You know that, right?”

“Yes. Yeah,” he says, and it feels a little easier to breathe. He rolls so he’s half on top of Stiles, kisses him and puts his finger in Stiles’s ear at the same time, just to hear him yell.

*

He tells his dad it was the Delgados brothers, that they took him to their headquarters. His dad pinches the bridge of his nose for a few seconds. “The Delgados brothers, your uncles, are currently travelling through the Midwest with ten other men, three women, a lion, two tigers and three horses. You know why, kid? They’re the knife throwing act in Dimitrov and Henderson’s Travelling Circus.”

“But they used to—” Scott breaks off, remembering exactly how much of his knowledge of his uncles had been gained from eavesdropping, half-remembered conversations that were carried out after he went to bed.

“That was your grandmother and your great aunt, kid. Now are you going to tell me the truth?”

Scott shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says. The clock in the sheriff’s office ticks, out of time with his dad’s heartbeat. His dad looks at him. Looks like he wants to say something. Has probably said a lot of things, to his mom and the sheriff. Maybe to Stiles, too. And Stiles has probably said a lot of things back. He usually does.

*

He asks his mom about her family later. She’s just come in from a late shift, and he makes her a mug of tea, heats up the plate of food he’d made for her. “My brothers don’t throw knives, they do trick riding,” she tells him, and won’t tell him anything else. Says she will when he’s old enough to understand. He stops asking when he notices how tired she looks. He offers to clear up, washes the sink without being asked to, wipes down the surfaces. He doesn’t know if his mom has any photographs of her family. He’s never met his uncles. All the photographs in the house are of him and his mom, him and Stiles, the sheriff. A self-contained unit. All the pictures of his dad are up in the attic. His mom wouldn’t let him destroy them, even when he was angry. They’re wrapped up carefully in tissue paper, in a sturdy box, taped up so the rats and mice can’t get to them.

He doesn’t know when he’ll be old enough to understand about her family, how much growing up he’ll have to do. He feels old enough for most things already. His head feels too full to sleep. Stiles is staying at home tonight, so he doesn’t have anyone to go upstairs for. He sits in the kitchen, watching the clock on the wall go around. The smell of cleaning product is making his nose hurt a little. It used to set off his asthma if he breathed it in too much. His mom’s asleep, snoring softly. The neighbors are in bed, too. There’s a car a few street away, a cat moving in the garden two doors down. If he concentrates, he can hear the birds in the trees, and—

“Derek,” he whispers, recognizes the heartbeat. Derek draws in a soft breath, then Scott hears his measured footsteps, unhurried. He gets his jacket on the way out, snags the house keys, sneaks out of the front door locking up behind him. Derek stands on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, looking up at his house. “Patrolling?” he asks quietly. Derek shrugs.

“Checking up,” he says. “Kira’s asleep, so is Malia. Lydia too.”

Scott can’t help laughing. “It sounds like a fairytale. The werewolf who makes sure you’re in bed, asleep, like a good child.” Derek just smiles, starts walking again. Scott falls into step. His head feels clearer out here; he feels settled, calmer. Things click back into place. “You okay?” he asks after a few blocks.

Derek shrugs. “I’ve been worse,” he says, which, yeah, he’s always been worse. But Derek has a weighted scale in terms of discomfort, tragedy. He’ll recover, he’ll heal. The wounds disappear, and for him, they always have. Scott kicks a loose stone, watches it skitter down the sidewalk, thud against the tire of one of the parked cars. It rebounds and he kicks it again, into the grass this time. “How about you?” Derek asks.

‘I’m fine,’ is on the tip of his tongue. “I don’t know,” he says instead, walks so his shoulders bump Derek’s every few steps. “I miss you. I mean, it was horrible—all of it—but you were there. And that part wasn’t. It made it easier. And now you’re not.” He keeps looking at the ground, at the scuffed toes of his sneakers as they walk. “I got used to you being there. Now I’m—it’s hard when you’re not.”

They stop walking. There’s a sickly orange glow pooled on the floor from the streetlight. Derek looks at him, waits until he meets his eyes. Nothing feels quite real. Nothing ever does at this time of night. Derek looks tired, the lines of his body muted somehow, slumped. His eyes are shadowed, the skin under them fragile looking, a little bruised. He smells familiar, like the woods, like wild things. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, and then “may I kiss you?” because he wants to ask in the right way. Derek’s pulse is a little faster, but he doesn’t seem scared or upset. He smells aroused already, but his face doesn’t give that away at all.

“Yes,” he says, but he doesn’t move. His hands are loose by his sides, his stance open, an invitation. Scott steps closer, tilts his head up. He doesn’t quite know where it’s okay to touch Derek, so he keeps his hands by his sides, presses their lips together gently. It’s a small, chaste kiss. Derek’s lips are soft. His beard feels a little odd, but Scott thinks he might like it. He tries again, tilting his head, brings his hand up to the side of Derek’s face, the soft, warm skin a surprise under his fingertips. Derek responds this time, kisses him back, keeps it gentle and quiet, his lips a steady pressure, the kind of kissing that could go on all day. Scott steps closer so they’re touching all the way down their bodies, leans into his warmth and finally, finally Derek pulls him close, hands stroking up and down his back. He smiles, pulls back a little so they’re sharing breath.

“Is this okay?” he whispers. Derek nods. Scott kisses the side of his neck, his pulse point, a sweet ache in his chest as Derek yields with an almost inaudible moan. He loves the way Derek smells, loves finding the points at which his scent is stronger. He loves how close they’re standing, the shape of the back of Derek’s head, the way Derek’s fingers flex on his back when he scrapes along his neck with his teeth, just a gentle, teasing pressure. He could do this all night, wants to do it all night, to lose himself in this, to cling to him as if they were the only two people in the whole world.

They kiss until a car backfires a few streets over. They break apart looking for the hunters, the guns. Derek looks ready to fight, closed off and grim again, but the hem of his shirt is uneven, his hair mussed, his lips reddened, jeans doing nothing to conceal his arousal. Scott’s mouth is tingling; he can’t stop himself from touching it, dragging his fingertips along his bottom lip. “Huh,” he murmurs, pressing his lip against his teeth. Derek raises both his eyebrows, doesn’t say anything. They walk for another mile, turn back and head for Scott’s house. It’s three AM when they get back. The key sticks a little in the lock and Scott has to coax it to get it to open. Derek takes off his shoes in the hallway, puts them neatly against the wall. He’s wearing green socks, and for some reason that’s funny to Scott. He doesn’t know quite why.

He only realizes Stiles is in his bed when he actually opens the bedroom door. It’s probably because he’s so accustomed to Stiles’s scent, because of how much his bed smells of them together already. The only thing Scott can see of him is his hair, just above his comforter, dark on the pale pillowcase. He’s curled up, the comforter bunched up under his feet because they get cold otherwise. He isn’t asleep. His eyes are closed, but he isn’t asleep. Scott leaves the light off, turns to look at Derek. Derek’s staring at the bed, at Stiles’s outline under the comforter. His fingers twitch at his sides but he’s still otherwise. “Hey buddy,” Stiles murmurs, voice slow and sleepy. “Had a bad night so I climbed in through your window; I keep telling you to fix your lock.”

Scott could fix the window, but he never will. Just like his mom will never ask for Stiles’s key back, and Derek will never get better security for his loft, and Stiles will never change where the spare key is kept. Stiles rolls over so he’s facing them. The moonlight makes him look washed out, all blacks, whites and grays, planes and hollows. He’s too thin, still, his hair a shade too long, the shadows under his eyes a little too deep, but he’s smiling, lazy and fond, looking at Derek with mischief in his eyes. “Did he follow you home? Do we get to keep him?”

Derek shuffles from one foot to the other. “We’re keeping him,” Scott says, wants to laugh at Derek’s noise of surprise, the sharp, sudden scent of Stiles’s arousal. Stiles flails as he tries to throw off the covers and get out of bed at the same time, tries to do everything at once, ends up half falling out of bed, catching himself at the last moment, turns on the bedside light almost by accident. He’s wearing his sweatpants, his oldest, most comfortable t-shirt, worn thin and stretched out, frayed on the collar where he chews it in thought. His hair is even more of a mess than usual. Scott doesn’t quite know if he’s ever loved him more. It feels like his heart is too big, too heavy. It feels a little like sadness, this ache he wants to press on like a loose tooth. “We both followed you home, remember?” he says, and Stiles blinks, looks down. “You brought us back,” he presses, because they’ve never really talked about it. Stiles has always deflected, talked around it, words too slippery for Scott to grasp properly. He won’t accept gratitude.

Stiles is turning away now, getting ready to say something flippant but Derek puts his hand on his shoulder, strokes the bare skin above his collar with his thumb a few times. Stiles doesn’t even have to tilt his chin to look into his eyes; they’re of a height. Derek looks at him steadily, expression patient, watchful. “So you get to keep us. You said we were your werewolves,” he adds with a slight quirk to his lips. “I remember.”

Stiles leans into his touch, smiling. There’s something beautiful about his real smile, the quiet one. Stiles uses the big gestures to distract you from the small ones, the ones that mean something, hiding the truth in amongst the noise. When he leans forward and kisses Derek, it’s soft and slow. Scott had assumed that it would be fiery, desperate, something bitter. That Stiles and Derek would kiss because they would _die_ if they didn’t, for it to be vicious and wild. It’s gentle, though. Stiles shuffles closer, so close their torsos are flush against each other, so it’s hard to tell where Derek ends and Stiles begins. Stiles’s fingers are pale against the skin of Derek’s neck as he cups his face in both hands, rises a little on his toes like he’d take off if he could. Derek moves with him, doesn’t break the kiss, makes these little noises at the back of his throat that he can’t quite seem to hold back.

Seeing them both come apart makes Scott feel breathless, as if he were the one being kissed. He’s staring, he knows he’s staring, but he never wants them to stop, never wants to look away from this. It feels like everything is starting to make sense, feels so right, so complete. He knows his eyes are glowing alpha red, can feel his wolf stretching out in contentment, lets out this growl that feels like a sigh rolling through him right up from his toes. Stiles and Derek break their kiss, look at him. Derek’s eyes are glowing blue, but it isn’t a challenge. More acknowledgement. Stiles smirks at him. He looks _wrecked,_ his lips red, skin flushed with stubble burn, dick hard, outlined against the front of his sweats, the beginning of a dark stain marking the fabric.

“Look at you,” Scott whispers. “Just—God, look at you.”

Derek walks towards him with that familiar almost-swagger, legs a little bowed, walks around him and presses himself right up against his back, all muscle and heat. Scott can feel the hardness of Derek’s dick pressing into his back. Derek kisses the side of his neck, the slight scrape of teeth making his hackles rise. It makes it even better, that edge. Scott tilts his head to the side, reaches back and pulls him closer. Stiles looks at them together for long moments, sharp eyes assessing, calculating, then he steps forward, drops to his knees with a grace that takes Scott’s breath away, fumbles eagerly at the belt of his jeans, yanks them down without undoing any more than the top button. He glares at Scott’s boxers like they've offended him somehow, like they're an unacceptable obstacle.

Scott can't quite move his hands. He's clawed up already. "Stiles," he says, but he doesn't know what else to say. He leans back against Derek, doesn't know where he wants to go, what to do. Derek hooks his chin over Scott’s shoulder, pulls down Scott’s boxers himself. Scott stumbles for a second. He’s hobbled, trapped there, jeans around his knees, boxers around his thighs. Derek keeps his hands on his hips, steadying him.

"We've got you," Derek says, voice soft in his ear. "Look at Stiles. Open your eyes," so he opens his eyes, looks down at Stiles on his knees, at his own dick, hard, pressed flush to his stomach. He can see it moving with every breath. He's leaking, smearing trails of precome all over his skin. Stiles hasn't even touched his dick yet and he feels like he's about to blow. Scott reaches out, puts his hand lightly on Stiles's face, declaws so he doesn't hurt him.

"You're really pretty," he slurs out, doesn't care when Stiles laughs at him, doesn't care because Stiles leans forward, steadies himself with one hand on Scott's hip, drags his lips all the way up the shaft of his dick. He breathes steadily, strokes Stiles's cheek. "So pretty," he says again. Stiles smiles up at him, leans in close again, nose pressed into the crease of his thigh, lips just brushing his skin. Stiles inhales, inhales again, his eyes drifting shut. Stiles keeps on scenting him, breathing in deeply, makes these mindless little thrusts with his hips as he loses himself in it. Stiles has his knees splayed either side of Scott’s legs, his hands on Scott’s hips. Caging him in.

“Easy there,” Derek murmurs. Scott doesn’t know who he’s talking to. Could be both of them. “You should—you should suck him. Wrap your lips around the head,” Derek says, voice ragged. Scott lets out a high whine at that, can’t help it. Between them, they’re going to kill him. Stiles looks up, keeps eye contact with Derek, gaze challenging. He doesn’t break it. Not even when he slides his lips over the head of Scott’s dick, wraps his long, clever fingers around the shaft. Not even when he takes too much in and gags, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. He looks—fuck, he still looks pretty like that, lips all pink and shiny stretched around his dick, cheeks flushed, eyelashes damp with tears. Some deep, dark part of Scott wants to _wreck_ him, to make him whine and beg, to keep him on the edge of coming for _hours_ , pin him down and just—

“Declaw,” Derek says into his ear, grips the back of his neck. He takes a breath, another, distantly registers the trickling of blood down his thighs. "Good," Derek says, keeps him held there as Stiles dives back in just as fast, just as messily. There's no coordination to it, no control. "Deep breaths,” Derek tells him, so he breathes as Derek presses his hand to Scott’s lower stomach, “keep going,” so he does, he keeps on breathing as this shivering pleasure runs through him. Stiles is making the most obscene noises, slick wet sounds around his dick. He’s got a rhythm going, now, bobs his head down to meet his fingers, tongue pressed up to the underside of Scott’s dick. It feels like pleasure is rising from his toes, through his fingers. He feels like a livewire. Derek crowds in closer, grazes his teeth down the side of Scott’s neck and Scott tilts his head to the side, lets it drop back onto Derek’s shoulder.

“Please,” Scott whines, his voice cracking. “Please,” he says again, and he doesn’t know what he’s asking for, not really, but Derek does it again, the edge of pain making everything brighter, sharper. He’s close to coming, mouth open as he gasps, reaching behind him to keep Derek’s mouth on his neck. He’s held, kept still, kept in place, Stiles in front of him, Derek pressed up against his back as Stiles jerks him off, sucks messily at the head of his dick, lips shiny, slick.

Everything feels so good. He feels like he could never have enough of this, of them. The air is thick and heavy with the scent of them together, this pulsing thrum, their heartbeats slightly out of time with each other, their breaths harsh in the quiet house. “Stiles, I’m close,” he pants, can feel his free hand clawing up, the dull ache of his teeth sharpening in his gums. Stiles doesn’t pull back, just keeps on jerking him off, lips tight around his dick, eyes closed. He looks so peaceful. Looks like he doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

Scott clenches his fist as his orgasm washes over him. It feels like he’s falling, like he can let himself fall. Derek hushes him as he sobs, knees shaking, wave after wave of pleasure pulling his orgasm out of him. Stiles doesn’t stop sucking, doesn’t stop jerking him off even when he’s finished coming. He carries on until Scott is sensitive to the point of pain. “Stiles,” Derek says when Scott is on the verge of losing control, pushes Stiles away, his hand gentle on Stiles’s shoulder. Stiles leans back, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He looks up at Scott with bright eyes, looks so pleased with himself. Scott brushes the hair back from Stiles’s forehead, the tips of his fingers damp with Stiles’s sweat. Stiles hasn’t come yet, but he isn’t touching himself. Stiles can’t keep himself from moving his hips, trying to get at least some relief from being kept hard for so long, but his hands rest on his thighs. He’s waiting to be told he can, maybe.

“Bed,” he says, still too hazy from coming to say much more than that. They end up on the bed, though, Scott up at the head, Stiles on his back between his legs, head resting on his shoulder. Stiles and Derek are naked. Derek is at the foot of the bed, taking in every detail. Derek can’t seem to stop staring at Stiles, at the way his legs naturally spread, at the flush that goes right down his chest, at his nipples, his long fingers, the way his toes curl into the mattress. Stiles is all reaction, response. Scott strokes down his chest, lightly touches his nipples, just to show Derek how he arches up into it, body begging for more as he tries to swat Scott’s hand away. He tugs gently at Stiles’s balls to show Derek how Stiles spreads his legs even further at the sensation, head thudding back onto Scott’s shoulder, dick jerking and pulsing with it. “He can come just from having his balls played with,” he tells Derek. “Probably could from just his nipples being touched, but we haven’t tried that yet. He’s too far gone for that tonight. Look at him, so desperate.”

Stiles whines, tries to hide his reddening face in Scott’s neck. Derek reaches out, trails his fingertips down the blush. “He likes being talked about, too,” Derek says. “Don’t you, Stiles?” Stiles just whines, fingers clawed in the mattress, but he stays still as Scott rubs his nipples with his thumbs in slow, drugging circles. “Look at you,” Derek murmurs. “Being so good for your alpha.” Stiles shudders, reaches out blindly and Derek smiles, crawls up the bed so Stiles can kiss him, lets Stiles pull him in close. Stiles ruts up against Derek’s hip, his thigh, mindlessly seeking friction as they kiss. Derek moves his hips a little, reaches between them and, from Stiles’s sudden moan, starts jerking them off, moves his hips in time with his hand.

Scott can’t stop staring at the way Derek’s back moves, the way the light hits his skin, the play of muscles in his upper back, his ass. He strokes down Derek’s back from his shoulders right to the dimples above his ass, does it again when he feels Derek leaning into his touch. He never wants to stop touching him, now he’s started. He keeps his hand on Derek’s back as Derek’s movements become less coordinated, as their kisses become more like gasps, shared air. Stiles grips Scott’s thighs with his hands, his breaths harsh and rapid as he gets closer and closer to coming. Scott kisses his shoulder, his neck, any part of him he can get to, can’t stop making these hushing sounds while Stiles falls apart, arches back, taut as a bowstring, comes with a high, desperate whine.

It doesn’t take Derek long to come after that, rutting up against Stiles’s hip as Stiles catches his breath. Derek is silent when he comes, eyes closed, lips parted. He stops breathing for a few seconds, stays completely still, suspended, then collapses as if his strings have been cut, twitching occasionally with the aftershocks, pants, open-mouthed on Stiles’s chest. They’re a heavy weight, pinning him to the bed as they breathe together. The room smells of nothing but them, their spunk. They don’t bother to clean up, just shuffle under the comforter together, sprawl on top of each other. “My werewolves,” Stiles says quietly, pauses for a few seconds. “Hey, can I tell people I won you in a poker game? Or that, like, all the other lots at the charity auction were too expensive? Or—” Derek covers his mouth, not bothering to move anything other than one limp arm. Stiles scowls and tries to get his arm off but Derek doesn’t move, even when he licks him.

“Tell them you thought you’d won a car, but we came in the mail instead,” Scott says, grins at Derek’s muffled grunt. “Or you could—”

Derek’s other hand comes up, turns the rest of what he was about to say into garbled noise. “Tell them the truth. Tell them you rescued us,” he says. Stiles goes quiet and still. “Tell them it was heroic.”

Stiles blinks, eyes damp. Nods. When Derek takes his hands away, they both stay quiet. It’s a heavy kind of quiet. Scott strokes Stiles’s hair, runs his finger lightly around this inside of his ear, just to make him shudder. Derek sighs, his foot swishing back and forth on the sheets. It’s the kind of closeness they had when they were in the cage, a closeness he’s missed with a guilty yearning, coming as it did after so many tortures and humiliations. He kisses the top of Derek head, doesn’t tell him why. He smiles up at the ceiling, playing with the hair at the nape of Derek’s neck, listens to their soft, slow breaths as they drift into sleep. He stays awake to watch over them, the sky outside beginning to lighten.

“I think my uncles are werewolves,” he whispers, “and I’m pretty sure my grandmother and great aunt are wanted criminals, and I’m also pretty sure that’s how my mom met my dad, and that he maybe tried to arrest them. I’m scared, because I don’t know if there’s a limit to the number of people I can love, and my heart feels too full already, and every heartbeat I hear keeps me human. I never want either of you to leave, but I’ll let you because I love you.”

Scott’s throat feels too tight. He aches, something tender blooming in his heart. Something more than survival. Something good. The part of himself he thinks of as his wolf stretches, content. They’re here, and they’re safe. In this moment, they’re safe. Things feel easier. Freedom feels easier. Less frightening. Stiles and Derek sleep on, tangled up in each other, with him. Scott listens to their hearts, beating in time. Closes his eyes, and waits for his to match.

 


End file.
